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A vote for Initiative 26

By Evan Smith
Enterprise forum editor

Shoreline and Lake Forest Park voters should support King County Initiative 26, which would put a County charter amendment on the November ballot.

If the initiative passes in the Aug. 19 primary, we would vote in November on whether to make King County offices non-partisan.

Voters face two questions: First, whether to put the proposed charter amendment on the ballot; and second, whether you vote "yes" or "no," whether you favor the initiative proposed by citizen petition on an alternative from the County Council.

First, we should vote "yes" because all local government should be non-partisan, and we should have a chance to write that into the charter in November. Second, we should choose the original initiative because it gives us real change, while the council's alternative, which would allow candidates to state a party preference, would give us a ballot that looks much like the partisan ballot we have under the top-two system.

County government should be non-partisan because its functions -- road repair, property assessment and issuing car licenses -- aren't partisan functions.

Political parties are important in large legislative bodies like Congress or a state legislature but something we can do without on a nine-member County Council.

All three 32nd District candidates face a learning curve

An Enterprise editorial last week said that either of Maralyn Chase's challengers for state representative in the Aug. 19 primary would have a steep learning curve if elected. That's also true for Chase herself. Chase has been in the Legislature for seven years but seems to have learned little about being an effective legislator.

Chase is skilled in understanding her district, but she shows little understanding of the Legislature. She introduced more bills this year than all but one other legislator, but most got nowhere because she has not learned how to work with leaders of her party. In fact, she has such little status with Democratic House leaders that when they handed out committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships before the 2007 session, they gave a vice chairmanship to a Republican rather than to Chase.

Contrast Chase's status in the Legislature with that of the 32nd District's other representative, Ruth Kagi, who heads an important House committee, is the Legislature's leader on early childhood education and chairwoman of a national legislator's organization on the subject, and has written important legislation on other subjects.

Time to shake up 32nd District Democrats

When I opened my absentee ballot, I found two Democrats running for precinct committee officer. I now find that several precincts have at least two names on the ballot. This election gives ordinary citizens a chance to reduce the hold of the party machine on local Democratic politics.

Six candidates who deserve the support of their neighbors are Gretchen Atkinson, Don Hanson, Dennis Heller, Karen Berquist, Brian Doennebrink and Stan Terry.


Evan Smith is Enterprise forum editor. Send comments to him at entopinion@heraldnet.com.